thepossum

Sadly playing with GiB almost destroyed my ability to signal. When playing with strangers I at least try to encourage the opening lead with a high or discourage with a low. I cant remember much else and am rarely even asked to discuss such things when I sit at a table. I like the reverse attitude for discards though. It makes sense if I remember and my partner understands what is going on. I used to understand count too - thats rather rusty too - even odd/hi-lo/lo-hi whatever About the main tool in my defensive armoury these days is choice of opening lead :)

The number of hands is finite but the issue of distributions and randomness requires consideration of infinity I need to add a correction. My memory isnt that good. I think I had the number of possible deals wrong by about 10 orders of magintude. Its only around 5.3 x10^28 deals But we are looking at the samples of hands, sequences, many players potentially over an indefinite period of time and much of the theory that is used also requires infinity I still don't think the problem has been specified well enough. Are we allowing for other variables and differences in individual perception of a pattern or lack of randomness too But most of do usually only see a tiny fraction of infinity do we not :) Deleted some nonsense statistical calculations :) I think I totally mis-estimated the degrees of freedom. My brain is addled at the moment

I imagined it must happen, never heard what happens it did. And since the Internet of Things or whatever its called etc - how many people have accidentally controlled someone else's device The other amusing things is that some of the people who keep having a go at me over randomness or other stuff here from time to time would assure me that each individual troll attempt were totally independent too :)

Suppose there were 10^n hands dealt so far. Let's hope for no duplicates How does ChiSquare look When I wake up I will calculate it. Degrees of freedom could be a problem Of course I appreciate a uniform distribution is no guarantee of randomness Sorry if I appear to be at all facetious about demonstrating lack of bias I always used to get anxious about claims that there was almost zero chance of duplicate MAC addresses, and what would or could happen if there were The level of discussion and appreciation of the issue reminds me of the old school level problem of how many people you need to get 50% chance of two with the same birthday. But in this case we have 10^38 order choices And as far as I'm concerned in the infinity of true randomness it doesn't matter what any hand or set of hands are like and how they were dealt. The infinity of true randomness includes totally non random stuff too But does that pass the Bridge pub test In that case do things have to be engineered to ensure enough apparent randomness Also without knowing I imagine hands for different levels of tournaments are designed. Much like golf. You don't want Tiger Woods playing a boring par 3 suburban course etc. They bore me to death and I can hardly hit the ball

😂 I was just thinking of a simple problem with one non random hand. Then we have to look at non random sets or sequences I'm sure we've all had sets of hands which all seemed very similar

I was searching my hand archives for a clear example of a non random hand It was like join the dots preschool Bridge where every play was a simple and fairly tedious sequence of covers round the table Clearly not random at all. After I noticed it on the first few rounds I just played the whole hand that way Just thinking of ways to test for bias. How about comparing the frequency of all hands dealt so far on Bridgebase with the theoretical uniform distribution of all possible hands P = 0.5 X 10-38 or something I can't remember tests and distributions. Maybe a simple Chi Square test

:lol:

How do you know. Couldn't it be a very long sequence of "random" hands where nobody spotted any patterns at all. From your logic if occasional patterns in the infinity of randomness are indicative of randomness then so are infinitely long sequences without patterns. Maybe the person observing has a poor sense of pattern observation too. Who knows Pattern matching is an attribute of each individual's brain. How many people have observed patterns etc All I am hoping is that it was demonstrated that the number of people and the patterns they observed were also random etc I'm not going to ask for details on how they assessed the hands for lack of bias, whatever that would mean anyway :) Just wondering. From you above comments if the randomness consultant showed a set of hands and nobody spotted any patterns if the algorithm had to be changed to ensure there are patterns that you assure me guarantee randomness Do I need to go on with this discussion Its a fun topic though. I will see if I can dig up my musings on randomness in Bridge Lets think. I know the number of hands dealt so far is a tiny fraction of infinity etc

Looks as if I seriously underbid. Getting too cautious in my old age :( I'm either out of practice, or just not in a competitive frame of mind How do you value that hand? I know sims dont mean much but I have 85% 6NT, 75% 6H and 65% 6S The more I look and realise how out of practice I am I should have counted my losers for possible major slam and maybe got there :(

I am wondering how you could test a single tourney's hands for randomness :) But depending on how you look at randomness I think its quite obvious that sometimes the hands on BBO are random and sometimes not I have definitely observed patterns in the hands from time to time :) Also I am sure on occasion hands are dealt and balanced in someway across tournaments using a dealer script. So clearly not random at all And who knows what shuffling algorithm they use I have no idea how BBO deals their stuff :)

Who is the dealer? Imagining its north I have Pass-1NT-Pass-4NT-Pass-Pass-Pass I often cant be bothered to explore majors :)

:) PS sorry about my edits I keep on writing and editing PPS Do you know how often I have been irritated by academics of many different disciplines using Heisenberg or Schroedinger as part of their arguments. I actually studied quantum physics at uni :) PS If anyone wonders at my lvels of anxiety and nature of my posts I hope they never take them the wrong way. Unlike some philosophical arguments you actually have to know the entirety of a person's circumstances, experience and history before judging how they react. Some people sadly don't think that way. They also seem to believe that the author of a text is unimportant and that the meaning they were intending to impart was unimportant too

I quite agree. Sadly the media seems to have no problem inviting people on to shows to discuss stuff they know little about - academic or non-academic I quite accept and sympathise with all your points However I disagree that it is possible to always stack up authority against other views/experiences to totally reject and repudiate them. There is a thing called power, it looks after itself and actually can obstruct legitimate alternative paradigms and theories etc. And sadly too often highly trained and knowledgeable authority figures are too ready to dismiss something that another highly educated trained and informed person may say (based on experience, information and wide reading), simply on the basis of weight of authority. Argument from authority must be challenged no matter who uses it. It has some weight but not everything. I am assuming your rhetorical dismissal of some people's views as being based on Wikipedia or blogs was not aimed at me since I certainly never rely on a few simple sources in anything I say. They are often used as a simple example on a page rather than citing all my sources. Maybe look at all your own posts and see how often you use a fairly trivial source as your backing. Sometimes over stuff I think I would have as much if not more informed and broader knowledge. How about the post on psychosis and delusions in relation to president Trump. You produced a little bit of backing to back up your authority. Have you had a lifetime's experience of psychosis to inform you? And in relation to power - it is a force all of its own and much so-called authority and knowledge simply seeks to perpetuate power whether it is right or not. Sadly some people are always on the wrong side of that power, maybe they always will be and will never be listened to. That is power. At least I accept it and how it compromises and corrupts so-called knowledge. I don't know many thousands of papers I have read/reviewed in one way or another (in a wide range of discplines too) - maybe not refereed in the academic sense. For me weighing up numbers of papers is not a good measure of the validity of anyone's arguments. It can help but its not everything Also, many extremely educated and academically smart people (different types of smarts of course) choose different paths or have different paths available to them. They may also lack one critical skill which is the critical skill in academic advancement (ie writing in a particular way), not thinking, understanding but the one thing that gets people to progress through that system. Simply possessing that one skill is not enough to grant authority over anything. And I have heard many extremely senior academic people say things that were blatantly wrong and get away with it on that authority. In terms of degradation of quality I also have serious concerns at the degradation of the term professor. It seems a trend in some countries these days that title is claimed by people at very junior levels of the academe (maybe with a prefix not understood by the ignorati). but not everyone can be a Professor, much as they would like to think they are However I am not hanging on for somebody to develop a piece of equipment to measure and disprove the existence of spirits in a place which many of us (if not all) know are there etc PS Finally the whole world has often be dominated and defined by a few groups who have the power to get things published. I believe that power and influence and control has grown even more and become even more concentrated and compromised by power and self-interest

To make it easier than constantly editing just a few comments. In relation to those metaphysical concepts to which you refer I personally feel able to incorporate/explain/understand them within my own rationalist/atheist mindset. I don't feel the need to dismiss them. They can all be explained or mostly explained through human psychology, subjective reaction to circumstances. I have no problem discussing concetps such as souls, gods, reincarnation, afterlife. They can have so many different meanings - maybe not those that others have - but we can at least try to conceptualise them. I appreciate to many that may be disrespectful but its the only way I can make sense of the world and try to understand as many people as possible As an example, and please dont mock, I believe in spirits, ghosts etc. I personally have experienced ghosts in a building with many ghosts. However I know its a highly subjective experience and the reason I could feel them was projecting my knowledge of a place, my feeling and sense of a place onto my own psychology - I felt the anguish, the torment and the fear of the people who had been through that place. All easily explained by biology and psychology. But most people would not have felt anything People live on in many ways after their biological death etc. They live on in other people, and often in very deep and profound spiritual ways etc They inhabit places, they inhabit inanimate objects. They are there and real to people who can feel them Human evolution has lasted many hundreds of thousands/millions of years on top of the existence of this planet and all living things. How we are all connected, through the evolution of our brains, our cognition to being homo sapiens, followed by our migrations around the world, our different traditions and philosophies developed at times and places - responding to place and time - all different but at the same time all human and sharing uch of the same underlying psychology overlaid with the unique cultural and geographical and historical components etc. All those things can be thought about, discussed, conceptualised as both a shared human psychology and an individual and cultural psychology etc There have been hundreds of thousands of years since we all migrated (at some hypothetical common point in our shared history). When that happened - at different places and times around the world - how people feel about their place. I am happy to accept a model of both having shared human biology and evolution as well as a conceptualisation and believe of having grown from a place. I try to respect all views and beliefs and fit them into my understanding without being disresepctful - I hope. Its almost an impossible task but at least I try. How am I o live somewhere with one of the world's oldest cultures and try at least to understand and respect those Indigenous belief systems while tt the same time believing in my own cultural "Western" scientific background and evolution and migration etc. I actually have no problem with that at all - maybe others have a problem with me thinking I do Another way of conceptualising things like spirit is energy etc There are countless ways of concetpualising and discussing anything but surely we cannot just throw away history, culture, evolution of human cognition, shared aspects of psychology and those unique to our place, history and culture. We cannot all just be reduced to beings differentiated solely by our biology. Many of us have experienced things which are difficult to explain - feelings of connectedness to all things - I'm sure explainable by many via brain chemistry and neurology - some people take drugs to achieve it. But that connectedness cannot simply be dismissed. We have things like archetypes, deep parts of our psychology, our culture and history. Some may be shared by everyone, some specific to place. If migration to some places happened so long ago and so separated from other influences for many millenia, that is enough time for highly unique psychological and social development overlayed on our common human ancestry etc As with everything I say I have extreme anxiety at it being wilfully misunderstood by destructive interests. That is a risk we all face. Many people have been destroyed without even getting a chance to explain what they mean, with other people not even making an attempt to understand what is really meant. I do it - I tend to react sometimes

EDIT Sorry I want to respond to your comments about supernatural beings and afterlife and similar concepts - please bear with me :) When I thought back to my comment about rationalism I was concerned that I had used the word correctly and how I intended. So I re-read a bit and sure enough I had. But I also know that within myself I am closer to that end of things than extreme empiricists who deny rational thought and have to have stuff pointed out or proved with an experiment. Those who seem incapable of thinking things through. So I regard myself as a rationalist and an atheist but not an extreme one. I think (and I was interested in those early psychologists and philosophers whose methods seem out of fashion) that many (even most) things and problems can be thought about, solved, or at least hypothesised about simply using one instrument (human thought) - I get totally irritated at people who dismiss it all by asking to see an RCT or meta analysis to back it up Extremists are always the problem. I also found reading about these different terms how much aspects of philosophical discourse annoy me. That is that they are obsessed with constantly arguing and debating extremes of different models and seemingly incapable of abstracting away to the higher level and the high level. Everything must always be couched in these low level models and debates I always feel at a disadvantage when people produce names I need to have read or models I need to have read. I prefer to debate things just using my own brain and thought and argue with other people on that level playing field. Resorting to specific models or names of people who we may or may not have read is a way of disempowering and essentially cancelling an argument. People also quibble over words, use their advantage of regularly using exactly the right term and model and not listening and thinking about what the other is really saying I generally prefer just talking about ideas and thinking about ideas. When I say stuff it usually fits into someone's model without me even knowing it or remembering it As for reductionism and explaining (theoretically - clearly not possibly) everything looking at very low level processes if I am suffering sever trauma from something that happened to me in my life I think its more useful to discuss people's experiences at a level that makes sense - the traumatising incident, the impact on their lives, feelings and experiences - not at the inhuman (EDIT I don't mean inhuman in case anyone is upset - low level systems are essentially prehuman but also essentially human too) and impossible to really explain level of genes, neurons, chemistry - beyond saying that certain biological systems may have been messed with. That is the level at which most human experience needs to be dealt with discussed and thought about. Of course you can look at brain scans and body chemistry but seriously. Of course people study and have their models of the damage that is caused to a biological and neurological systems but for most of us and most of our experiences and communications that is rather useless PS On the subject of atheism, I was re-reading various different philosophies/traditions I have tried to understand over the years - one of which is Jainism. I was interested in their cosmology and understanding of the world. Evidently its not really theistic or atheistic. Some have even coined transtheism as a higher level concept. Can we not do the same and try to argue at a higher level about true meaning. We could argue endlessly at the levels of atheism-theism, empiricism-rationalism etc Thats what I am trying to get at. And its very hard ever being able to argue at that level because we all have these models which are useful in some way but also very constraining PPS Some of the worst cases of resorting to authority come from the academe who use it all the time to assert claimed superiority and their sole right to speak without actually listening. They are often worse than the examples of unbacked statements and straw men you referred to. We are currently being expected to change the whole world by a group of people whose confident utterances may be proved wrong in so many years time Final edit by way of apology for how my posts always turn out, start to ramble, need editing. It relates a bit to what I was getting at above. Discussing in these types of forums causes extreme anxiety - and a very extreme anxiety response (explainable no doubt by by neurology and body chemistry and fear systems out of whack - something is flooding my body and brain). But the cause of that anxiety is at a much higher level - it is fear of being misunderstood, fear of using the wrong word, fear of looking stupid, fear of causing offence, hurt or disrespect etc. Both personally and professionally I like to (and feel obliged to) treat everyone the same, respect everyone's beliefs and view points, while at the same time holding my own. Its a strange thing and something of a contradiction that by simply trying to understand and explain (to myself) somebody else's beliefs, explain it with my models I could be causing disrespect rather than even getting close to understanding. But that is a problem we all face in life

I agree, I wouldn't be as upset with that one as with 0 keycards and a void It would be sad though if the player making the Blackwood query was allowing for 3-0 trump split

I can't comment on much but I would have opened hand 2 with a heart bid - dont know where that gets you For some entertainment I tried Hand 2 in Qplus using a few systems. The software ended in 5 spades-1; when I opened 1 heart we ended up in 6HX-1 -100

According to the WHO the vaccines will protect the most vulnerable people but will not prevent the repressive measures against everyone else I smell a rat The rest, especially the young have a right to a life and not to have their lives, dreams, and hopes put on hold indefinitely to protect people who have had one of the best lives in human history and have the while world looking after them The fascism we are observing all over the world. The inequalities. The true lack of care for genuine inequality. Seriously what happened to everyone's "liberal" credentials There is even inequality in the sacrifice expected. The wealthy maybe have a year or two's sacrifice but the poor have many more years, maybe indefinite given the way their chances have been knocked back Meanwhile all these happy privileged biotechs and associated interests sit their smugly as the dollars roll in indefinitely. They worked that one out nicely too When are people going to take their heads out of the sand, look around and start asking some serious questions In other possibly related news etc Some of us had the nous/knowledge and the courage to call out the way the world was going years ago. 2020-21 is so far the pinnacle etc I don't usually like ad hominem but sometimes you need to look at the money, who is doing well out of something and ask a few questions - on a global scale as well as across sectors within countries And no, I do not have to be an academic, a doctor whatever to ask legitimate questions and make informed comments - but I appreciate the risks people like me take calling stuff out For most of 2020 the one hope the people spreading the BS used against us all was that a vaccine would free us all up. All we had to do was wait and get excited when thse dozens of corporations and research insitutions globally made all their money and produced their competing vaccines But hey, when a few of them start being rolled out sure enough the BS (most of us saw) is held up for all to see by the WHO itself Meanwhile the self-interested powerful groups who benefit from it all, are hardly affected, still get to do their stuff, make money, have nice lives get to enjoy stuff indefinitely while the rest suffer indefinitely. That's the deal is it What's interetsing and what some of us know is that its not just biotech where they sit, climate tech, other tech, all sold as a lie to a gullible world so they keep wealthy and powerful and who cares about the rest But what doo we get from one of our other self-interested groups which like to manipulate the world. Instead of pictures of poor people dying in the street under repressive measures we get happy smiling propaganda pieces of people waving their 24/7 surveillance apps around We get puff pieces out of Beijing about the manipulative stuff they feed their own people. Now seemingly the whole world has the same level of media manipulation. I'm not pointing fingers at Beijing by the way. The problem groups are in each of our counties Finally, I know I'm not officially allowed to comment. I was denied that for various reasons (private) but in terms of biotech/pharma lack of scrutiny I have a fair bit of evidence and know of a fair bit of silenced evidence in a few major areas of big pharma. Are we trust those same people with the covid rubbish. You cannot compromise a health ethic with dollars. Its something of a disaster really. You cannot compromise health with the same kind of risk that people take investing in other types of tech. Look at the world. Seriously. How many people can defend it And while I am not going to outline my evidence the doubts and the possible suspicions/questions/hypotheses that are quite legitimate its educational how few people ask them and how those who ask them have their lives destroyed. Sadly the group(s) we trust to ask questions have gone AWOL or are not knowledgeable enough to ask or sadly are too interested to ask. I know we all have interests. We all have lives. That is power. So I have a legitimate interest and am starting to speak up. Not all of us believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or whatever So tell me all you experts out there (many who play Bridge) I could sit here and have a comfortable but miserable self-interested life and stay silent. Or care about something with meaning and speak up. What am I supposed to do. Maybe ask that of everyone Hey at least I'm prepared to own up to my self-interest and realise it relies largely on things like expectancy of quality life ahead compared to may others. Seriously people All these years we/I trusted all these institutions. When the crunch comes they either show up as not competent to provide adequate scrutiny or too self-interested to ask questions. Maybe look at how all those interests have become concentrated increasingly. I may be able to understand papers about the dopaminergic system, receptor and the impact of medications on those - but seriously does anyone even have the time or patience to try and make sense of a biotechengineering paper Public debate is still at a very low level. Maybe the world doesnt care. Maybe everyone is happy in their empty propaganda filled lives. Who knows

I've read more than enough religious and philosophical texts to last me a lifetime The way everyone trivialises argument with constant straw men such as those on this thread are part of the problem. How many sentences are there we could take issue and throw at each other etc The sad thing is that its hard to even get atheists (with their supposed superior intellect) to think and argue at a higher level Many extreme (I use the word cautiously) atheists or rationalists maybe are at a level that think everything can be explained at a reductionist level of neurons and genes. That is a battle we have to fight in many disciplines, not just philosophy/religion whatever. I am seriously concerned about the state of the world with the increasing dominance and power of those tendencies/outlooks and the loss of the philosophical. I started studying (went a long way almost to practice) psychology - mainly because of its groundings in philosophy and its more sophisticated analytical/philosophical elements only to find a gradual take over of the cog-neuro perspective with its very limited lens I posted all this stuff about human history, psychology, cognition, language, migration patterns, evolution and what all those philosophies may have meant at some period in time - its a widely studied and fascinating subject, not to be trivialised. Why do I always feel at risk on these forums. As if I am being setup for something PS Its also concerning to me that many people (powerful influential and authoritative ones) have a very limited view on what constitutes evidence. Thats what I was getting at with my comment about evidence and understanding of models. There is so much evidence in many important disciplines that is ignored simply because people cannot find a trial or meta analysis to back it up etc. Thats the point I am trying to make in relation to philosophical outlook and different modes of inquiry

My main concern with all these defences of GiB is that GiB's standard practice does not seem to be documented anywhere I do like the idea of being able to break free from RKCB shackles if you feel as responder things should progress :) I think my favorite GiB RKCB response is even number of keycards and a void with just a void (no keycards). Its particularly constructive since its a high level bid that prevents you avoiding 6 level most of the time. Its done that a few times. In bridge and blackwood I take even as 2 or 4. There are mathematical arguments that you could include 0 I guess

Maybe on average which is the limit of most studies. That's something I call "needing to look for limitations in models" However as an atheist I feel I would know more about religion and philosophy than most people - religious or atheist :) However since I am not a professor of religion or atheism (or even have a PhD) those who profess to know most about everything and conveniently use models to back them up would take no notice of anything I say on the subject :) Come to think of it are atheism studies a subset of religious studies? I also struggle with claiming to believe or not believe in something that isn't really very well defined at all However on the other subject, when visiting (and trying to respect) highly religious countries and cultures I try not to let Western whatever (godlessness?) it is get in the way of choosing to avoid unnecessarily complex or difficult arguments with people who may not accept or understand that viewpoint. Maybe it depends who you talk to, but most of the time when traveling I preferred to be with ordinary people like me rather than those in the Universities

This has been my mood since I first hear it many decades ago But even more so after a lifetime experience and the more I read the more it fits my mood by the day

I am curious how to reconcile this with the recent celebration of the Democrats' (EDIT fixed apostrophe - more than one Democrat) success :)

I would regard myself as a secular Christian upbringing atheist (who tried to incorporate and make sense of half a dozen other major traditions etc) with a lifetime of complex experiences who has a distrust for some high profile outspoken atheist types due to their rather limited lens on the world and human experience. They/many atheists seem to deny the sophistication and complexity of human evolution, cognition, psychology, and what all the different philosophical/religious interpretations and representations of those things could be. I prefer to work out and question (as a scientific type) what things mean(how they came about) rather than mocking them which is a common approach. Note - regarding your comment on locus of control is it not the case that possibly the majority of the world has a very little power/control (and entitled to feel it is largely external) and many of those who mock/similar word have huge power I feel that some extreme atheistic pronouncements/attitudes are on a par with the distrust I have with techs running our world PS I remember when I first visited Indonesia I was advised to call myself a Christian rather than an atheist. It was a safer approach :) PPS As an afterthought I should be careful what I say about papers from one of my associated (and trained) professional groups, but I do find the nature of much psychological research (including my own) to be rather frustrating in how it is researched, analysed and written up. It too seems to lose the complexity of the human mind. This thing appears not to be correlated with this but it is with that kind of thing

Indeed, yet again I answered the wrong question. I would contemplate a double for penalties but probably pass Looking again at 18 to make sure I answered the right question, I reckon 2C would be quite acceptable (to me :) ) but 1H is fine. You want to be in 4H min